The Mountain Area Health Education Center, serving 16 counties in Western North Carolina, is receiving a CMS Health Care Innovation Award to test team-based enhanced primary care for patients with chronic pain, whose treatment can be both costly and avoidably frequent. The target population for the test includes over 2,000 patients. The intervention will create multidisciplinary teams to provide enhanced primary care, using mid-level providers to co-manage care and providing counseling and medication management services. The result is expected to be better pain control, improved health, a reduction in the frequency of outpatient visits, and additional cost reductions arising from the use of mid-level providers with estimated savings of approximately $2.4 million. Over the three-year period, Mountain Area Health Education Center's program will train an estimated 390 health care workers and create an estimated 7.5 new jobs. These health workers will form multidisciplinary teams to provide enhanced primary care to patients with chronic pain in rural North Carolina.
